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Service Line Coverage

What is Service Line Coverage?

Most homeowners are not aware that they own, or are responsible for, the outdoor sewer and water piping as well as underground electrical and communication lines from the street to their house. Homeowners can be liable for maintenance and repair costs should these service lines fail. The cost of repairing and replacing such equipment can be substantial if you are not prepared.

With Service Line Coverage, you are protecting yourself from unexpected service line failures outside your home that you may not be aware of until you need to replace it after a malfunction.

What’s considered a “Service Line”?

Underground Service Lines include the following:

⪧ electrical, telephone and cable internet lines

These underground electrical lines can arc, leaving you without electricity or the use of your telephone or internet.

Underground water piping connecting your home to:

⪧ a public water supply system or private well, cistern or retention pond

⪧ a heating system that is located outside the home

⪧ underground steam piping that connects from your home to an outdoor heating system

⪧ ground loop piping that connects to a heat pump

⪧ underground sewer piping

⪧ underground drain piping

These lines can leak, break, tear, rupture or collapse, leaving you without water or a way to drain water or sewage.

What's covered?

The coverage pays to repair or replace underground service lines that accidentally break, leak, tear, rupture, collapse or arc.

Under Service Line Coverage, we automatically include coverage for the most typical expenses up to the limits specified in your policy. These automatic extensions of coverage include the following:

⪧ Loss of Use - Payment for lodging should your home be made uninhabitable because of damage to insured equipment

⪧ Excavation Costs - Payment for cost of excavation needed to expose damaged underground service lines for repair or replacement.

⪧ Expediting Expenses - Payment for cost of temporary repairs and the expedition of permanent repair or replacement

⪧ Environmental, Safety and Efficiency Improvements - If property needs to be replaced, we will pay up to 150% of the original cost to replace it with an equivalent product that is more environmentally friendly, energy/water efficient, or safer to use.

Coverage limits available are $10,000 or $25,000 subject to the policy deductible.

Subject to terms, conditions and exclusions of the policy.

Examples of losses

A section of sewer line running from a house to the City’s main line collapsed, forcing sewage and wastewater to build up under a section of concrete driveway causing it to crack and sink. With no way to dispose of sewage or wastewater the house was uninhabitable, forcing the homeowner and his family to spend 5 days at a hotel until repairs were made.

We would pay for:

⪧ The cost of excavating to expose the damaged section of sewer line

⪧ The cost to replace the damaged section of sewer line

⪧ The cost to put back or repair the areas excavated or torn up to expose the damaged line

⪧ The reasonable additional costs for the insured and his family to stay in a hotel until repairs are made